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A hard drive is limited to a maximum of 3 MFS partition pairs (of this I am certain)

An Apple partition map is limited to a total of 2.0TB (correct?)

Now, if I haven't gone wrong yet, should it be possible to use all of a 2TB drive starting with a 6.2-minimal image (starts with single, small mfs partition pair), expanding twice, taking care not to make expansion partitions beyond 1.0TiB?

Am this a bad plan?

They say beer will make me dumb. It are go good with pizza!-----------
3XR10, prommed, 3xdvr40,4xdvr39, all networked, ranging from 40GB to 750GB

Funny you should ask that question as I was thinking the same thing. I am currently having to replace a 1TB failed Seagate drive on a dual 1TB system. I have a 1.5TB I am playing with. The 1.5TB has 289GB left available after the 1TB MFS media addition, however that makes the 3rd media partition so I can't try it to find out.

According to what I have read you are correct 3 media partitions are it, and 1.0TB max (have seen something about 1.2TB somewhere though), and I have also seen the 2.0TB total max. So I agree with what you are saying, now it's just a matter of trying it out. New drive will be here next week so I will have time to try it out when I get everything back up and running.

first attempt didn't work. GSOD/reboot loop at about 2 minute intervals. Not sure what went wrong. It's been a few years since I worked on this, and I'm not really equipped for it anymore. serial port cable is lost, as is the pc i used to use for cdrom boot/image work. Not sure if I even have a ide pc anymore (not really relevant, since it at least boots, I think the ide/sata adapter I'm using is not the problem).
Second attempt, with a different image, is off to a better start. Has booted, and successfully completed a C&DE. Now to put it back in the PC and expand it...

They say beer will make me dumb. It are go good with pizza!-----------
3XR10, prommed, 3xdvr40,4xdvr39, all networked, ranging from 40GB to 750GB

I think the 1.2TB limit you have seen is instances which start with a factory 250GB drive. A factory drive has only one remaining partition pair for expansion, and adding a maximum size (1.0TB) partition to a expanded factory image gives 1.2TB if one allows a slight rounding error.

Testing continues. Running 0 hour image has just successfully booted after the first 1.0TB expansion. System info says 1077 hours. Now back to the pc for the second partition pair expansion. The first time I did everything all in one shot, and it didn't work. Don't know why. Hopefully this won't be the point where I break it.

They say beer will make me dumb. It are go good with pizza!-----------
3XR10, prommed, 3xdvr40,4xdvr39, all networked, ranging from 40GB to 750GB

I think the 1.2TB limit you have seen is instances which start with a factory 250GB drive. A factory drive has only one remaining partition pair for expansion

That's what I noticed when I re-imaged a drive with a 250GB format and looked at the partition map. Unless there is a way to delete the second mfs partition anything larger than 1TB you will have alot of wasted space trying to hit the 2TB mark.

I'm trying to figure out what MFSLive will do if I attempt an expand with 1.8TB of free space. WinMFS automatically asks to limit the expansion to a 1 TB partition.

You used WinMFS to expand one partition to 1.0TB, then on the second expansion it gave and error. What if you used WinMFS to get the 1.0TB partition then used MFSLive to try to add the remainder of the drive.

I thought about that first, but settled on trying a different route.
MFSLive has been more reliable for me than winMFS, I'm trying to stick with it.

I put the 0 hour image on a 1TB drive, and used MFSLive to expand to fill it fully, then backing up that image. Restoring that image onto the 2TB drive gave me an image with two mfs partition pairs spanning 1.0TB, and after this upcoming boot test, I will try expanding, again, with MFSLive.

They say beer will make me dumb. It are go good with pizza!-----------
3XR10, prommed, 3xdvr40,4xdvr39, all networked, ranging from 40GB to 750GB

I even modified partitions on a 250GB drive down to 1 media partition and everything appeared to work except for info module in TivoWebPlus. Now I have a 1TB on the way and I could have gotten away with a 2TB drive.